Mulk

I think I agree with Calderis in this, at least based on what we know to this point. It sure looks like the spren cooperated in their own demise. The KRs on screen in Dalinar's vision all had to know what they were about to do, and there is no chance their spren didn't know what was up. We already know Syl can withdraw Kaladin's ability to use stormlight, so it follows that she doesn't HAVE to become a sword if she doesn't want to. I will of course reserve the right to change my mind... There are things the spren who are talking on screen (so, Syl, Pattern and Wyndle thus far) makes it clear to me that the only spren who ever were bonded aside from the Stormfather himself are dead - and the Stormfather at this point isn't talking. No one in Shadesmar seems to know the details of why the Recreance happened, only that it happened and a lot of their friends/colleagues are dead. No one on Roshar remembers and I think Jasnah's research and frustration points out how hard it is to make out fact from fiction, not to mention what is flat out missing after ~5000 years plus wanton destruction and rewrite by the Vorin church. Barring the Stormfather's input, we may never know. Brandon may not want us to, at least not anytime soon. And in any case, the Stormfather is the very essence of oaths and binding - there is almost no chance he would view oathbreaking as anything other than bad, even if there is a justification. As to the Oathgates themselves, I would guess at this point in the story that Shallan (or Renarin I guess) has attempted to travel to each of the other Oathgates and found them all locked. I mean, really, if they turn the lock on the Oathgate fabrial to whatever other city they are trying to reach and it doesn't transport them, the gate is either locked or destroyed on the other end. And since it doesn't transport them, it's doubtful it uses up Stormlight. It does, however, beg the question of whether Jasnah actually figured out how to use the one in Kholinar since they see it as locked.

Off the top of my head, I know he swapped Dalinar and...uh...wasn't it supposed to be Szeth for this one? Anyway, I know Dalinar wasn't originally the book 3 center. I do love that he's giving us two Heralds - one who survived the previous Desolation and the one who did not - I've wanted Taln's viewpoint since the opening of WoK. Shame those are probably like 20 years away from reality though.

I can totally live with that

I rather morbidly predicted Jordan would die prior to finishing his work sometime around book 8. I stuck with it because I had to know the end. I'm a completionist, if I start a work I'm going to finish it. The only exception I ever made was for ASOIAF - after reading book 1 I never picked up another one and have never been tempted to. In my view, Jordan's greatest issue was his inability to figure out how to get to the end he had envisioned from where he was. His greatest weakness (though it is also a strength) was a fondness for complex storytelling that eventually resulted in stunning levels of named characters and viewpoints, not to mention complexity of prophecy and politics that had him taking years to make sure he wasn't messing up on details in order to publish the next work. As a writer, he had a fondness for repeated phrasings and visuals that drove me nuts at times. I tell you all that to tell you that in spite of these things it is a very good work in totality and worth the time if you can allot it. Some of the battle stuff is just epic in scope, he has a gift for description that is Tolkienian at times, you'll be able to visualize pretty well a lot of locales that he is describing, and the characters are memorable. StormingTexan has a great point about the timeline of the book - despite it taking 14 books to complete, it's a relatively short timeline and when you keep that in mind, it makes some of the characters' seeming intransigence make a lot more sense - it took a lot of books for them to change but not all that much time in the grand scheme of things.

Only one, with respect to the only piece of your post I left in... Why would you call him Beardin when you could call him Kalabeard? See how that rolls off the tongue? KALABEARD KalaBEARD, Kalabeard, kalabeard kalabeard Okay I'm done...

I believe Watchcry is taking the amplification/change that Dalinar/Stormfather had on Shallan's lightweaving ability and trying to infer another combination, one which allows a dead spren to come back. I would guess that since Dalinar's effect produced what the Stormfather is able to see, perhaps Dalinar's bond with the Stormfather and the Stormfather's knowledge of spren death and life might make this possible. For myself, I think Brandon will eventually show someone making the fit and helping one of the dead blades live again, though I'm doubtful it will be Adolin. I don't have solid reasoning for that, just a personal opinion at this point.

@The Invested Beard - lol @Toaster Retribution - entirely possible. We don't know a lot about them at this point, what they are up to other than they are bad. I think this may come back to what exactly the Oathpact was and why it works to keep Rayse/Odium bound in system and to that world specifically. I really hope we get some sort of flashback or interlude about it at some point. I'd love some illumination on it.

If that is the case...well, wow. I don't see how the Stormfather could be bound in a sphere like that, but then the binding of something that is noncorporeal in most instances may lend itself to some oddities. My personal theory is there isn't a single Odium equivalent to the Stormfather. And in any case...we don't really know what happened to the sphere, do we? At least, last I knew Szeth had it. I don't have the books in front of me but the notes in both the coppermind and the stormlight wiki point to the interlude as a place that notes he hid it in Jah Keved. But if Gavilar wanted to keep it away from the Parshendi, the implication (without further knowledge) is that the sphere cannot by itself grant transformation into a voidbringing form.

All possible. In order - 1. Given Ruin's relative lack of ability to move people and events (it worked but took a devilishly long time to do it and his influence was mostly limited to spiked people) while being bound on the same world he was trying to destroy, I rather think Odium is going to have even less influence on Roshar. Lacking the spiking of Scadrial, I'm wondering where he'd get his ability to influence across distance like that. Not saying impossible, just saying I find it unlikely given limitations faced by another shard trying to influence a world toward destruction 2. The "World pissed itself" quote makes me lean against the second - I rather think Taln appeared fairly close at hand. 3. This is entirely possible. I just don't think it's probable that they found and broke all spren interactions for all parshmen/Parshendi across the whole world; or captured all voidspren across the whole world. Not to mention their offspring across five thousand years. Unless the black sphere contained all void spren (unlikely) I rather think that Gavilar saying that is an overstatement; it does make me incredibly curious what the source of that information is and if it is the same source that led Jasnah to believe the parshmen were voidbringers - I don't think we've seen those actual sources on screen yet. I'm quite willing to be proven wrong about all this. That's what makes boards like this fun - making predictions and theorizing and finding out what was right and what wasn't.

I had an odd thought about the Honorblades. We don't know much at all about their history. We know that Taln's blade was missing when the Heralds congregated after Aharietam almost five thousand years ago. Presumably his blade is still bound to him, though I'm not clear at all whether it is the one he showed up to Kholinar bearing - I rather think it was not but that's irrelevant to where I'm going with this. Were the Honorblades coded to the Heralds by Honor back when he first made and gave them out? What I mean is, unless all ten respawn from Damnation to the spot they left their swords at (which could be true or could not be - we have no written word that I am aware of at this point), even if we assume that no one could possibly stumble across them and take them in the intervening years, you would think they have to have some way to retrieve their blades that doesn't involve roaming the entirety of Roshar to find them. Syl makes it seem like their powers are dependent on their blade, which means a bladeless Herald is just a really long-lived and experienced human with no Radiant powers. Is it not therefore likely that the Heralds can summon their specific blades back to themselves regardless of who holds them, that it is matched to their sDNA? That would seem to be the case to me. So, whenever the Windrunner leader comes out of hiding and/or accepts the truth of the matter, I won't be surprised to find he has the Windrunner blade already or that the windrunner blade might possibly vanish out of Dalinar's (or whoever's) keeping.

You may be right; I'm just rolling with this as a working hypothesis for now. I'm totally open to revising it later as it becomes more clear. And to elaborate/correct myself above, Venli possibly did know of stormform (she says she got it from the songs) but I don't know that they would actually have had the capability to capture a voidspren to force the transition until after. There has to be a reason the parshmen/parshendi never even once by accident turned stormform, right? The way it describes form changing, you go into a storm performing certain rituals to try to attract the "right" spren for the form you want which makes it seem like sometimes you come out as something else. Or it could be they are simply (as constituted prior to Eshonai's transformation) not attractive enough as mostly subsistence chattel slaves (in the case of the parshmen) or as relatively peaceful Parshendi.

Given the time periods we are talking about here, and how Odium seems to be bound between Desolations so that he can't hop elsewhere, I think we can rule out Odium influence on him, at least at the time the Diagram was written - whenever it was, we know it was before Taln showed up in Kholinar and was therefore before any Desolation could have started. I note specifically that it is not until after Taln shows up that the Parshendi know of stormform and are able to capture the spren they need to go to stormform. That could be a coincidence, but right now I'm leaning toward it not being one - it will be my contention for the time being that the Parshendi are incapable of becoming true voidbringers until Odium's influence on Roshar is released again, which appears to be the case as it stands at this moment. I hope he winds up an ally, but right now I'm leaning towards unintentional bad guy. The Niall comp is apt - he thinks he's right, wants to do right for it, but has totally misjudged both his own rightness and what is actually going on.

brofist, Calderis. It's a hell of a road, one I don't regret being on, but it is a hard one. Poke me should you want to chat or hell, just vent. Finding people with common ground is so damned hard.

Renarin is like my son, or so I think. My son is high-functioning autistic; I'm of the opinion Renarin is similar, higher functioning and perhaps Asperger's, but on the spectrum regardless. My son makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Even me at times. He doesn't assimilate data like I do, doesn't react to people like I do, worries about the strangest stuff, doesn't emotionally respond like most people are used to, gets overwhelmed by simple things and lets some really big ones just roll off of him. Anyway. I bring this up because Renarin's apparent leap forward as a Radiant is exactly how my son has developed over his whole life. There has been no gradual learning for him (and he's 17 now). There have been periods of no learning at all, followed by these massive leaps in understanding and adaptability that are unpredictable in both their duration and occurrence. The more I see of Renarin, the more I like him. Have to say I was pretty gratified he manifested Regrowth.

I laughed at the whole Syl as cheerleader of sex image. Probably blushed a bit too. I think you don't show Dalinar killing a kid because you don't need to. At least not at this point. That's a massive shock that (assuming he actually did kill the kid) might overawe in the minds of the audience whatever his big reveal later for Dalinar is - the act(s) that put him on the road to the Nightwatcher and that makes his friend/combat ally leave the army for the ardentia. That needs to be biggest and baddest, I think, in terms of overall book build up, and I don't think we've seen that yet. I don't think Taravangian will ever truly be an ally unless he has a day of ultimate intelligence allowing him to rewrite the Diagram in a less contentious way, or a day allowing him to offer binding commentary in which he reinterprets some of it and comes out with a new course of action following Dalinar's lead. With respect to the transformed parshmen, I find their organization to be fully in line with what we know of the Parshendi - we know they can be in tune with each other over vast distances, so I find the fact that they are organized and unified over great distances to be in accord with what we know of them. I also think that it's possible that the reason some of them end up warform (or others) is that the nature of a storm is such that a close grouping of parshmen won't always have enough spren "hit" it to turn them all stormform. It still drags them out of the dullform variant they are in and gives them much better brains and capacity. That's my theory anyway Really wish November would get here.

hey all...long time lurker first time poster. I haven't had the chance to read all 22 pages of this yet, but one possible prediction jumped out at me as I reread 7-9 and hemmed and hawed over them - could Kaladin be the one who figures out how to unlock the gate at Kholinar? Perhaps in his scouting he travels there, that this is where the Hearthstone parshmen went, progresses to the fourth oath, picks up some shardplate as a result (that's just my guess, that he gains the ability to spawn/use plate at either the fourth or fifth oath), rescues a bunch of folks and gates them away to Urithiru to evade total destruction.